Review of the Honda CLR 125 City Fly

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At the time I bought this bike I had a Honda NTV 600 Revere and I'd just sold the SLR 650. My mate had bought his City Fly from brand new and put 10,000 miles on it then his back got the better of him and he started to use his car. It sat in his shed for a couple for years then it came up in conversation.

I'm tighter than cramp. Most of my work takes me around the Bolton, Bury, Wigan and Chorley area and using a 600cc bike to make journeys in mostly 30 and 40 zones seemed pointless. The NTV was using fuel at around 50 to 55mpg and my mate told me his 125 would easily do 100mpg. What with tyres costing well in excess of £70 each and the spiraling cost of fuel I struck a deal. For the princely sum of £450 I became the proud owner of a 10,000 mile and 5 year old 125.

Having been stuck in a shed for 2 years the bike took surprisingly little to coax it into life. The first and most obvious item to replace was the battery, dead as a dodo as you'd expect having not been used to so long. It was nice to be able to buy a battery without breaking the bank...the first of many savings. I changed the oil, the little motor only takes a litre which means another saving. Full choke, push the button, sputter sputter cough cough pop bang dum dum dum dum dum...it was up and runnng. The motor sounded just fine, no rattles, well nothing more than you'd expect. I suited up and went for my first ride. She felt fine, light, comfortable and snickety snick, clickety click on the gearbox. The only problem seemed to be a cough on full throttle, maybe that will need to be looked at. I felt really pleased with my new purchase and looked forward to saving so much cash. In case you were wondering what the cough on full throttle was...petrol. It cleared up perfectly when I filled her up for the first time. 2 year old petrol ain't the best.

And save I have. If the bike's ridden as carefully as possible she can return 120mpg. That over twice as much as the NTV, which means I can cut my fuel bills by 50%. Ridden really hard that will drop to 90mpg and generally she returns 100 to 105mpg. Smashing! Tyres are cheaper too. I use the original Pirelli MT 60's as they work well, grip well and last around 9,000 miles for the rear and 20,000 miles for the front. In terms of milage alone that's twice as much as the NTV and other bigger bikes. They are not much cheaper though, the front being £55ish and rear £60ish. The chain and sprocket kit is half the price and if looked after I got 16,000 miles from the original one. Running a 125 is considerably cheaper than running a big bike. I can ignore the jibes from the other bikers...can you?

It's also a huge amount of fun to ride. It's dressed up like a crosser but really it's a road bike. It's so very light and easy to ride after a larger bike. The gearbox is PERFECT. It works exactly as a gearbox should do, snick-click up, click-snick down, easy to find neutral and the clutch is feather light. I suspect my clutch is a tiny bit warped. Crawling it traffic the limited power surges up and down making it somewhat jerky. I don't think this is common to all the CLR's, I think mine must have gotten a little hot one day. For the most part I never even notice it. Of course there's not a lot of power. It's as powerful and as quick as any other 125, and after the NTV and the SLR and now against my Fazer 600 it is very slow. But it's soooooooo muuuuuuuuch fuuuuuun! Riding over the tops I'm the fastest man alive, I'm at full bore, head down and absolutely flying! I'm Rossi, I'm Fogarty and I'm on the quickest bike ever...then I spot a copper with his radar and I panick...until I see the speedo is buried, nailed and right around at...55mph. I can carve the corners, waving my leg out supermotard style, duck and dive through the traffic like I'm on a pushbike and race cars at the traffic lights. Then after that I can potter along at 30 with thoughts of fluffy clouds in my head and car drivers think I'm on a fifty and forgive my lethargic pace. I know it's a road bike dressed like a crosser, but I do take it iff road from time to time. Nothing serious you understand, just farm tracks and country lanes.

I've had the bike just over a year now and put 13,000 more miles on her. In that time I've done all the normal repair and maintenance you'd expect. Chain and sprokets, brake pads, rear shoes and oil changes. I change the oil every 1,200 miles, it takes just under a litre per change. The front brake is brilliant. It's a Grimeca, a poor mans version of Brembo, and it's ten times the Brembo that was fitted on the SLR650. There are 2 small pistons in the caliper and they are made of some weird metal that doesn't suffer rust and cleans up very very easily. It's actually easier to completely remove the caliper to change the pads and give it all a good clean than try to do it in situ. It's so easy to bleed. The rear brake, like most motorcycle drum brakes, suffers from the actuating pin sticking in the brake plate. With the aid of my trusty paddock stand it only takes half an hour to remove the wheel, clean the pin and plate and have it all working perfectly again. I've not touched the motor. Not checked the tappits or camchain or timing. If it's not broken I'm not going to fix it. Put oil in it and ride it.

The build quality is OK, down on the original Hondas but acceptable. The bike lives outside and the chrome wheels are rusting badly. Everything else is fading and flaking but no faster than any other bike I've put miles onto. The linkage on the rear shock has squeaked ever since I bought it. I've oiled it...WD40'd it...cleaned it and all that but I'm not going to strip it because it works fine and it worries me not. The rear rack is actually plastic. Using the bike for work I put a rather large top-box on there and it was fine till one day the box was hanging off to one side. I'd broken the rack. I guess 4 litres of milk, 3 litres of Vimto and several tins of soup might overstress an item rated at 5 kilos. I've bodged a solution.

I love this bike. It takes me everywhere I need to go and want to go for half the price of anything else. They're quite rare so I guess I'll struggle to find another one when this one finally dies. I will however be getting another 125. Speed is how fast it FEELs not the number on the speedo. Fun is measured in smiles per hour not miles per hour. And cost is measured in cold hard savings.

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